The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. —Luke 2:20.
Can you imagine the shepherds returning to their flocks after the night they had? They had seen God’s glory. They had experienced the presence of the angel of the Lord. They had seen the newborn King, the promised Messiah, the Savior of the world. It was just as they had been told by the holy heavenly messenger. As amazing as the angel’s words of announcement had been, they were gloriously fulfilled. Jesus the Christ was newly born; he was also the absolute answer to God’s greatest promises and the greatest assurance that God keeps his word. Incredibly, God had chosen shepherds, unnamed to us and unimportant to their peers, to be the first human witnesses and participants in God’s glorious story of salvation in sending his Messiah. I believe Luke wanted to remind us that no matter who we are or where we seem to be on the social pecking order, Jesus came for us. The coming of Jesus to our world tells us immediately that Jesus came for all people — young and old, insider or outsider, powerful or powerless, influential or inconsequential in influence. Jesus came for us… for you… for me!